Darth Vader....Your LSx Stroker is ready!!
03-18-2012, 11:44 PM
#182
I just had to bump another dyno date I had scheduled for next week....I just have too many customer projects in the works and when push comes to shove its usually my personal ones that take a back seat.
I am committed to finishing the testing of the engine (and a few other assorted goodies) and sharing the results with you guys when I do....unfortunately its just going to happen not nearly as quickly as all of us would like, myself no exception. I suspect Im still a month or so out at this point but will try to to slide some of my personal stuff in between jobs.....I cant go another season of good weather without this car....its just too close at this point to let that happen.
Did I mention I have a bunch of body panel work to complete (a new Tiger Shark nose, C6Z style quarter panels, etc.), a new driveline to fit and install (C6Z trans,rear, and cradle), an exhaust I need to modify to fit the new beefier driveline components, a custom stereo install (converting my 1.5 Din car to a more modern double din upgrade with Nav), a roll cage install to finish up......LOL
Yep.....that's me....loco!!
Having close to a 750 HP N/A bullet to install is alot of motivation though....once the engine is complete (off the dyno) I am going to install it and seeing that engine installed between the fenderwells will be all the tease I can handle and it will get me motivated to get on and wrap up all the other tasks that I need to complete to turn my 2000 Vette into the "Supercar" I've always dreamed it can be. Oh yeah....I forgot to add the coil over upgrade suspension as well!!
Hope you guys have less crap on your plate than I do this year to get out and enjoy your favorite ride when the warmer weather rolls in. I know without a doubt when its done Im going to say it was worth all the downtime and BS.....(but even that consoling thought is getting old!....LOL).
Cheers,
Tony
PS....I will pop back in here soon to touch on some of the questions a few posts up.
Last edited by Tony Mamo @ AFR; 03-19-2012 at 02:42 AM.
04-25-2012, 09:37 PM
#185
Yes.....customers are still first 
Actually regarding that, I'm excited that some of the larger customer related projects I have been involved in are finally making their way to the dyno and being discussed in various build threads currently posted here....and there should be a few more results just behind them assuming their builds are moving along at a brisker pace than my own!....LOL
Its going to happen....right now I'm targeting the end of next month. I really need to get this engine back on the dyno!
Will keep you guys posted of course....(the waiting is a bitch for all of us I assure you!)
-Tony
Actually regarding that, I'm excited that some of the larger customer related projects I have been involved in are finally making their way to the dyno and being discussed in various build threads currently posted here....and there should be a few more results just behind them assuming their builds are moving along at a brisker pace than my own!....LOL
Its going to happen....right now I'm targeting the end of next month. I really need to get this engine back on the dyno!
Will keep you guys posted of course....(the waiting is a bitch for all of us I assure you!)
-Tony
05-16-2012, 04:09 AM
#189
Not yet....but hopefully with the latest round of mods it might be.
Problem here folks, when you have a normally aspirated baseline this strong (730 HP) you have to work 3X as hard and spend triple the time/and quite often the money to see any appreciable gains. You start to fight for single digits assuming your trying to improve things with the same cam, same displacement, same compression (actually slightly lower with the new head combo), and a similar induction....it becomes really challenging! (which also adds to the excitement in some respects).
A pic of how we closed the evening....late as usual! (but showing clear signs of coming back to life again!)
Anyway....got a kick out of the new black towel I purchased awhile back that I decided to blow the dust off and use it as a good-night blanket for my 454 "Vader" project (the whole black towel color being the crack up.....it was never purchased with that in mind but it seemed oh so fitting this evening!)
Ive been burning the midnight oil lately wrapping up the new "skunkworks" 255 heads I will debut and feature on this engine and just sorting out all the details I need to put in place to hopefully get this engine back on the dyno very soon (couple of weeks or so).
Here are a few teaser pics.....gotta get some sleep. Will fill you in on the madness when I'm more awake and have a few minutes to type. I may have spent the last 9 months chasing 5 HP for all I know (that end result is not out of the question here).....but I'll be damned if I didn't put in quite the effort in hopes of actually seeing that 750 number thru a fast intake and a moderately sized (for this engine displacement) hyd. roller.
Anyway....will get you guys up to speed on the good (and the potentially not so good) of some of the latest R&D I have devoted an enormous amount of time over the last 6-8 months. Its really kind of interesting and makes the results from the next round of testing even more exciting.....Im hoping for the best...and bracing myself for the worst!
Will fill you guys in more at another time....
-Tony
Problem here folks, when you have a normally aspirated baseline this strong (730 HP) you have to work 3X as hard and spend triple the time/and quite often the money to see any appreciable gains. You start to fight for single digits assuming your trying to improve things with the same cam, same displacement, same compression (actually slightly lower with the new head combo), and a similar induction....it becomes really challenging! (which also adds to the excitement in some respects).
A pic of how we closed the evening....late as usual! (but showing clear signs of coming back to life again!)
Anyway....got a kick out of the new black towel I purchased awhile back that I decided to blow the dust off and use it as a good-night blanket for my 454 "Vader" project (the whole black towel color being the crack up.....it was never purchased with that in mind but it seemed oh so fitting this evening!)
Ive been burning the midnight oil lately wrapping up the new "skunkworks" 255 heads I will debut and feature on this engine and just sorting out all the details I need to put in place to hopefully get this engine back on the dyno very soon (couple of weeks or so).
Here are a few teaser pics.....gotta get some sleep. Will fill you in on the madness when I'm more awake and have a few minutes to type. I may have spent the last 9 months chasing 5 HP for all I know (that end result is not out of the question here).....but I'll be damned if I didn't put in quite the effort in hopes of actually seeing that 750 number thru a fast intake and a moderately sized (for this engine displacement) hyd. roller.
Anyway....will get you guys up to speed on the good (and the potentially not so good) of some of the latest R&D I have devoted an enormous amount of time over the last 6-8 months. Its really kind of interesting and makes the results from the next round of testing even more exciting.....Im hoping for the best...and bracing myself for the worst!
Will fill you guys in more at another time....
-Tony
05-20-2012, 10:57 AM
#195
I'm surprised you didn't go with an ITB setup. Wouldn't that let you run an even larger cam and maintain that low rpm drivability?
Also, I'd love to see you stick a truck manifold on it while its on the dyno just to see the difference.
Also, I'd love to see you stick a truck manifold on it while its on the dyno just to see the difference.
Last edited by 409CISecondGen; 05-20-2012 at 11:04 AM.
05-22-2012, 01:49 AM
#197
And then I woke up?....LOL Maybe, but until then I will exploit and push the envelope of the very versatile "plastic fantastic" as much as I can.
Speaking of that (pushing the envelope of the FAST) one of the things I will be testing on this engine is a highly modified FAST I spent and embarrassing number of hours modifying (think two pounds of two part epoxy and too many late nights in front of the flowbench to remember). And that brings me full circle to the post I made a few days ago when I jump started this thread back to life stating that I was going to share the good and the bad of my latest round of R&D.
Let me elaborate as quickly as I can for those who care and have the time to read....will do my best to stay on point and keep it as easy to understand as possible.
The FAST I reworked....starting with my already highly modified "normal" port job I got real aggressive in changing the shape of some of the runners. Alot of this required epoxy and many rounds of it.....very time consuming stuff but I was determined to find more and push an already stout baseline (from the first round or testing) even higher if I could.
Prior to this I flowed the exact heads I pulled from my engine with the original manifold I removed from the engine bolted in front of them and the humongous 102 TB I wired open hanging off the intake (if I can find the pics I will post one). This is as close to real world conditions using a flowbench as it gets.....no radius plate in front of the intake port....the actual manifold and TB perfectly simulating the way it draws airflow from a running engine. The heavily massaged....aka "Mamofied" 245 AFR's were flowing on average 367- 368 CFM's at .650 lift. At the time (more on this later) the stoutest cathedral ports I have ever tested (one or two intake ports went 370 CFM!).
Flowing the same set-up "real world".....thru the actual ported FAST and TB, that same port peaked at 330 CFM. A hair better that I guess it might and pretty impressive all things considered (keeping in mind a cathedral head that flows 330 CFM with a radius plate is pretty impressive on my flowbench). 330 CFM is a substantial amount of air and getting that net thru a 12" long intake tract with all the twists and turns from the entrance of the TB to the port is an accomplishment. Proof in point....730 HP normally aspirated just a few weeks before I decided to test this.....LOL
So lets fast forward.....two months and two to three pounds of epoxy later (and a pile of epoxy and plastic chips that would fill a shoebox), Im left with a heavily modified FAST intake (a few friends that endured the pain of hearing about all of this madness for weeks on end started calling it the "Mamofold" and I was just calling it "FrankenFast"......LOL).
Net results on the flowbench after this exhaustive effort....flowing the modified intake in front of the exact same set of heads (TB attached to the intake just like before), I improved the net flow to the cylinder from 330 CFM to 345 - 347 CFM depending on the runner you checked. A huge gain when you consider that its truly net to the cylinder. You can pick up 20 CFM in a cylinder head port (tested with a radius plate) and bolt a manifold on it only to see next to nothing (more on that later also).....in this case I had a real world sizable gain that was approaching 20 CFM's and almost twice the goal of 10 CFM I had in mind when I embarked on my mission. I was stoked....thrilled thinking of what this could mean come dyno day (a one for one gain....1 HP per CFM gained....seemed very realistic based on the countless rounds of dyno testing I have been involved with in the past....conservative in fact). Also, I picked up the flow at every lift point and it gapped higher as I lifted the valve.....starting as early as .200 it was already 5 CFM stronger.....+7 CFM at .300....+10 CFM at .400......+14 CFM at .500.....+15-17 CFM at .600 plus....you get the picture (it's a pretty one if you've walked a long time in my shoes!!)
The punchline....I had the opportunity to bolt this exotic lump of plastic and epoxy I created on a 408 low compression LS engine that Richard Holdener happened to be testing comparing LS3 heads to cathedral heads (using a stock set of LS3 heads against an out of the box AFR 245). We faired really well in that test btw making more power and a good bit more torque but the engine was nothing special, had 9 and change compression and a medium sized hyd roller. I dont recall exactly but I want to say it made around 630 HP. Not bad considering the low CR but not in the league of the engine featured in this build obviously. With much anticipation I swapped to the "Mamofold" and held my breath as Brule pulled the handle of the dyno like he's down a thousand times before. Noted the torque output starting to make a run (hitting higher ground) as the engine climbed and then seconds later the peak power settling in exactly where it had before. Huuuuuuh.....can we run that again?
It was very strange.....the beginning/middle part of the curve looked great (acting exactly as I would have hoped/expected with the modified intake's power curve making a good run separating itself fairly quickly from the baseline FAST only to very abruptly come to the exact same torque and power level creating a literal overlay from about 5000 - 6700 RPM's. And when I say an overlay, I men the two dyno curves were stacked on top of one another....it looked like there was a single line on the screen past 5K that the two lines morphed into (also strange to be that exact for such a long RPM span). What's stranger yet is we tried installing 1.875 headers on that engine the same day....400+ CID.....600+ HP, and it didn't like it.....it didn't make a single ounce more power with the larger tube header, another phenomenon I have never experienced before in all of the LS testing I have done (my stuff and others). I also noticed the power curve was flat (not "arced" like it should be) from 5800 ish thru 6700 where the pull was terminated.
Did I just waste a hundred or so hours on this manifold??
Maybe.....the jury is still out till I back to back it on my engine but to say the wind was taken from my sails is an understatement. Hell I rowed home that day with very "limp" sails.....LOL However.....I have this nagging thought about the strange power curve this engine produced and about the fact that even a large tube header.....worth 8-10 on everything I have ever tried them on at this power level showed absolutely no gains also (actually just lost some bottom end).
I share this with all of you to make a few points.....this sheeeeet aint easy.....it takes retarded dedication to push the envelope and sometimes you go nowhere or possibly even move in a backwards direction, not to mention the rest of you knowing the back story makes for a little more excitement and (dare I say appreciation) come dyno day! To be honest this manifold has been completed for months now and its been gathering dust ever since its underwhelming debut on the 408, but I have hopes still (weak hopes....LOL) that it might shine a little better on an engine with much better air processing abilities (100+ HP we hope). BTW, if this intake doesn't show much of a gain on my engine it proves another theory I have as it relates to intake manifolds....finding more flow isn't always synonymous with finding more power. With cylinder heads its almost always the case.....with manifolds its 50/50 at best because there are a host of other issues that can effect the ultimate outcome of a design change. Its one of the reasons I opted not to mess with runner length....picking up the airflow I did without resorting to a length change seemed like a very efficient approach to the new design and I would have wagered a good chunk of change the results would have been alot more promising than what I experienced on the 408. Lets see how Vader likes the new intake.....I'm going to stay cautiously optimistic with much more humble expectations now
Speaking of Vader.....a couple of shots from the last few days of activity. This one should be labeled "Limited travel lifters and non adjustable rockers"!
The next is how she sits as of an hour ago.....I forgot how damn sexy this engine was/is. Its great to see it back in one piece again!
Hope you guys were in the mood to read and I didn't put you to sleep. Ive got more drama for you.....but will save it for one of my next posts.
This dyno trip is going to be a trip.....Ive got more questions going into this test than the first round.....cool stuff....I live for this kind of excitement though.....its the kind of thing that stays with you for years to come. I just hope I'm smiling (at least a little!) when the smoke clears from the dyno cell!!
Later,
Tony
Last edited by Tony Mamo @ AFR; 05-22-2012 at 12:34 PM.
05-22-2012, 03:22 AM
#199
It obviously got out of hand but it's just the nature of this kind of thing if your obsessive compulsive about flow....LOL.
Once I invested all the time and R&D in the first runner (which is always the most fun....the most exciting), slowly improving the net flow of the entire induction track (from TB to the intake valve of the head), I had no choice but to do the same to the other seven runners, not realizing how time intensive that was going to be. Then I found few more CFM's experimenting with some other stuff during the course of all this work necessitating going back to the ones I thought were finished and spending more time.....LOL
Yep....it kinda goes like that!
Anyway....found an older pic I took of similar testing on the FAST (some of the original R&D I did in an effort to optimize my porting program) and basically the current work I did looked exactly the same but picture the TB also bolted to the manifold with the blade wired open (WOT baby!)
This pic gives you a better idea of what we are discussing here....
-Tony
